`Star Wars` Books Flight On Shuttle

May 14, 1985|By United Press International.

CAPE CANAVERAL, FLA. — Discovery will carry the first shuttle-borne ``Star Wars`` experiment into orbit next month along with three communications satellites, NASA and Defense Department officials said Monday.

A spokesman for the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization at the Pentagon said an ``optical tracking device`` would be carried aloft by Discovery`s seven-member crew, which includes a Frenchman and a nephew of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, when the flight starts around June 14.

The mission will mark the first experiment directly related to the ``Star Wars`` missile-defense program to be carried into space aboard a shuttle. Officials said a more detailed statement about the project is expected later this week.

``Star Wars`` is a huge research effort to identify technology that can be used for space-based or ground systems to destroy enemy missiles before they can reach targets in the United States.

The estimated cost of research for the next five years comes to around $26 billion. The Pentagon has asked Congress for $3.7 billion for fiscal 1986. In Washington, 37 religious, civil-rights and scientific leaders called on Congress to refuse funding for the defense system, saying they are ``people of faith . . . (with) no faith at all`` in ``Star Wars.``

``We reject any system of security based on fear and intimidation,`` they said in a statement. ``This plan would generate an enormous new arms race in both offensive and defensive weapons.``

Signers of the ``We Have No Faith in Star Wars`` statement included three Roman Catholic bishops, presidents of two Protestant denominations, three members of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology faculty, the head of the Reform Judaism movement, a member of Congress and two prominent civil-rights leaders.

``We who sign this appeal are people of faith--but we have no faith at all in the Strategic Defense Initiative, generally known as `Star Wars,`

`` the statement said.

The statement was prepared and circulated by the Quaker organization, the American Friends Service Committee.

It said that ``Star Wars`` supporters claim that the system ``presents a moral alternative`` to the arms race. ``In reality, this plan would lead to the material and spiritual impoverishment of our people . . . further destabilize an already risky strategic situation, and thus increase the likelihood of nuclear war,`` the opponents said.